Palm Wine and Presbyterians.

If you take out camera, they will come. They love to be "snapped."


Fighting with Matt is not easy. In fact, I got slapped twice. Reese defended me by fencing... Matt's broom was no match for Reese's bicycle tire pump that left a large welt on Matt's head.


Escaping the presbyterians only to find they have all come to the hut to drink.


After the hut, on the walk back... what can I say. Do you love my moo moo?


I was a little tired of the crowd. Ready to walk back to Matt's...


On the walk from Matt's house we encountered this David Bowie look-alike.






Sorry it’s been so long. There just hasn’t been much to say.

Cameroon is still dusty, people still drink more than they work, and I am still living in the same village.

We had our in-service training last month that allowed all of the agroforesters to get back together for the first time since training. It was a lovely debacle of marcotting trees, visiting the nightclub in Bamenda, killing seedlings while practicing grafting and eating… eating enormous amounts of food four times a day.

Though IST is supposed to inspire you to go back and be supervolunteer, I just wanted to go back and take a vacation. The village life is slow… too slow for a recent graduate who polished off 105 pages of thesis in two weeks and spent whole nights under the florescence of the computer lab. Here I go to bed at 8. During the day, its sometimes difficult to know what I should be doing… some have said this is the way it is supposed to be. Country life. Slow. Full of siestas. Imagine yourself in a bubble. Fill that bubble with jell-o and chunks of nerf. Then go to work, and you should have some idea what I am experiencing. Motivation is difficult. Organization is difficult.

This weekend I headed north on the other side of the ring road, the primary artery of the NW. I went to Kumbo and then on to Nseh, the village of my favorite Mfome, PCV Reese. You know you’re bored when you travel 6 hours to go to church events that include 5 grueling hours of sermons, speeches and lively offerings to God. Reese and I walked to PCV Matt’s in Mbiyah (he has electricity)… it was his Presbyterian church that had the “cornerstone” laying. It was actually a hole between the two front doors of the church that had a stone over it…. They put a clear bucket in it with Cameroonian newspapers, a bible, some sermons and some coins (they emphasized to the crowd that they were only putting coins in the bucket… so that no one would come in the night to tear up the cement for 35 cents).

After about 3 hours of speeches (each “Big Man” that attends the event has to give a speech… there were maybe 5-10 of those), Matt and I escaped to find a drink. We sat down with some locals and downed two liters of free palm wine (locals are so generous). The others (Reese, Ally and anon) joined us after they realized we had not left to “make water,” but were tucked away in a hut down the street. We enjoyed a some time there, drinking and lying about where we were from (that was just me, actually… I told them I was from Canada) and promising to bring the more obnoxious back to Canada “Tuesday” (that was only me, too). It made the next few church hours more bearable (Sure enough, when we came back I bought a calabash bowl for 800cfa and too much gusto at the offering auction… round of applause for the crazy white lady in the moo moo).

The next day, Reese and I walked back to his village through perhaps the most picturesque landscape I have seen in the Northwest. Dramatic hills, completely cultivated with even ridges of cassava, beans, Irish potatoes… and the from time to time a grass-roofed hut, for corn drying. The slope was incredibly steep… my legs are very sore today… almost too difficult to walk. Yet, we saw woman bent over their ridges on almost every hillside. Unbelievable. We got back and tried to catch one of Reese’s chickens, General Tsao, so that we could eat him…

Other than these specific events, I am very normal. Excitement is limited to reading over the different degrees of action put in place for avian flu, if I can watch surgery when I go to Kate’s (watched a c-section the other day) and whether or not the road is paved. But life is generally very placid, very quiet (except for the occasional Black Widow-style murder… the Akofunguba hairdresser hit her hubby in the head with a 2x4). Still having a good time.

Greetings to all!